


Dissonance

by kaerukiddo



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Essentially some musings about Kite, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Piercings, Post-Chimera Ant Arc, Tattoos, implied trans character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 04:50:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20700230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaerukiddo/pseuds/kaerukiddo
Summary: It isn’t that she hates her body. It is agile and sturdy, a house with a strong foundation. But it is not a home.(Some musings about Kite post-Chimera Ant Arc.)





	Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

> This fic includes mentions of bodily dysphoria and some gender dysphoria, as tagged in the title, so be careful as you read! She/her pronouns are used for post-chimera-ant-arc Kite; this choice was made because they have not yet come to fully comprehend their identity. I myself am trans, but nonetheless, I hope this content isn't offensive to anyone.

When Kite showers, she doesn’t turn on the vent -- the mirror fogs up that way. She sees only the vaguest impressions of herself when she steps out from behind the curtain: amorphous swaths of tan and ripe crimson. 

It isn’t that she hates her body. It is agile and sturdy, a house with a strong foundation. But it is not a home. 

She towels off wet freckles and wetter hair, tries not to pay attention to the crests and peaks and valleys of her body. She recalls so keenly narrow set hips, knobby knees, bony fingers--she is none of this, not now. 

The mirror is beginning to clear, contours crystallizing in glass, and Kite finally looks up. Eyes catch on violet, ruby red, sand and silt. 

Her fingers run over her earlobes, still unmarred and soft. Missing something. 

She turns. She half expects it to be there, on her shoulder blade: a gestural black smudge from a distance, a small sparrow in flight from up close. 

__________________________________________________________________________

“I don’t know if this is a good idea, Ging.” 

Kite’s arms are crossed over his bare chest as he watches Ging in his preparations, a needle held aloft between his fingertips over a small candle flame. 

“Are you even good at drawing?” 

“What am I not good at?” Ging asks in response. Not a second later, he curses and clumsily drops the needle as the flame licks too close to his fingertips. Kite wants to laugh, but then he remembers that this trainwreck of a man is about to permanently put ink on his body, and somehow it’s not quite as funny. 

Nonetheless, they set things up and begin, Kite’s back facing Ging. This is a symbol, perhaps, of all their interactions; the vulnerability with which Kite exposes himself to Ging, the trust he places in him. There is no knife in his back, though--not now, not ever. There is, however, a needle. 

“Why a bird?” Ging asks conversationally as he works diligently on the tattoo, “I mean, I know you love animals, but why this one?”

“It’s sort of sentimental of me, I suppose. It’s one of my happiest memories from childhood. I guess I don’t have many of those,” he says with a rueful little smile. 

Ging makes a small humming sound in acknowledgment and expectation, so Kite continues, “I found a sparrow that I thought was dead. It wouldn’t move. But when I carefully picked it up, I realized its wing was broken, that it could be nursed back to health. So I did. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, and I wasn’t especially adept at avian care, but over time, he seemed to come back to life. I guess there’s something romantic about that--I could never shake it from my mind. I think that’s when I really fell in love with animals.” 

“What about them?” Ging asks, still methodically pricking away at Kite’s skin with the needle. 

“Their tenacity,” Kite responds, “the way they’re eager for life. That’s a quality that I used to lack.” 

“And now?” 

Kite smiles, and he knows Ging can’t see it, but he imagines that he can tell all the same. “Now, things are different.” 

“Good,” Ging says, and then leans back. “All done. See, that wasn’t that bad after all, was it?” 

“Remains to be seen,” Kite responds, “how does it look?” 

“Pretty wicked, if I do say so myself,” Ging responds. “Come look in the mirror.” 

Kite gets up and walks toward the vanity, then turns and looks the best he can over his shoulder. The bird--the sparrow--is small and inky and the surrounding skin is red and inflamed, but something about it is undeniably beautiful. It’s not that Ging did the best job; one has to look closely to discern the wingspan, the beak, the tail. Nonetheless, there’s something precious about it: a little piece of Ging on his shoulder blade, a testament to his relationship with the man, and also a reminder of sorts--of what Kite has gained. What that might be, he can’t quite put words to. He thinks it might be something like faith. 

“I love it,” Kite all but whispers. 

“You better,” Ging jokes, “because it’s stuck there forever, now.” 

__________________________________________________________________________

Gon had asked about them. 

“Hmm?” Kite asks, “these?” He touches his earlobes, worrying the metal rings between his fingers. 

“Yeah! Why’d you get them?” Gon asks, eyes wide and enthusiastic. 

Kite thinks about this for a moment. “Why does anybody do anything?” he asks, and realizes this sounds a little too philosophical, so he adds, “for instance, why do you wear green, Gon?” 

“Hmm… I guess just because I like it!”

Kite nods. “That’s the same with my piercings.” 

“Didn’t they hurt?” Gon asks. 

“Not particularly,” Kite says. He reaches down and takes Gon’s earlobe between finger and thumb and then gives it a quick, sharp pinch. “It feels like that.” 

Gon smiles brightly, comments that it doesn’t hurt--and for Gon, who Kite can tell has experience pain (at least the physical sort) in spades, he most certainly means it. Gon continues rambling on excitedly about how maybe he’ll get some piercings someday, but he’s not sure where or what or when, and Kite smiles. 

Gon is a breath of fresh air in some ways. Kite has known him for a matter of days, or perhaps weeks at this point, and yet there’s something about his cheerfulness, his determination, his youthful-but-not-altogether-innocent obstinance that is refreshing. What would it be like to be young, Kite wonders, to experience the world with wonder? And then he thinks to himself that perhaps he is still young. He has a long way left to go in life, he figures.

It’s funny. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.  
__________________________________________________________________________

“Help me pierce my ears,” Kite says. It’s too direct to be a request and yet too soft for a demand--perhaps because she knows with certainty that Spin will do it. Spin seems to do most things for her, if only she asks. 

Spin looks at her. “That’d suit you,” she says after examining her face for a moment. It’s a little uncomfortable; Kite doesn’t like to be looked at for very long. Never has, really. “Any particular reason why?” 

“No,” Kite says, but she knows that Spin can probably tell this isn’t exactly accurate. “I just like the look.” A half truth. 

“Well, alright,” Spin says, and Kite is grateful she doesn’t press or pry. “I have some earrings that might work. I’m sure there’s a needle around here somewhere.” 

“Do you have silver hoops?” Kite asks, knowing the specificity gives her away. 

Spin thinks for a moment, tapping her chin. “Probably. I’ll check.” 

They do it the next day. Spin sterilizes the needle meticulously, scrubs off Kite’s earlobes with rubbing alcohol, every movement precise. Carefully, she makes a mark on each lobe, holds up a mirror for Kite to inspect and approve the placement. She does, so Spin tells her to take a breath in and then breathe out. On the exhale there’s the quick pinch of the needle on one side, followed by the stinging sensation of an earring sliding through the resulting puncture. 

“You okay?” Spin asks, “I know it’s your first piercing.” 

It isn’t her first, not really. The echoes of the sensory memory still rattle in her mind. Living some days (most days, if she’s honest) is a sort of incessant deja vu, and this is no different. “I’m fine, do the other one.” 

“Okay,” Spin says, then asks her to breathe again, a second pinch following. The sensation isn’t very painful, but rather burns in a way, her earlobes hot and throbbing. It’s a good sort of pain, Kite decides--the satisfying kind, not unlike the warm ache in muscles after exercising or the electric prick of an ink-filled needle along the skin. Something that marks a change, something that lasts. 

“What do you think?” Spin asks after wiping away blood with some gauze. A mirror is held aloft in front of her. Kite stares. Shining on her earlobes are two perfect little loops of silver: small moons suspended in the sky. It’s comforting, somehow--both the sight of them and the sensation, the blood collecting and buzzing in her pink-tinged ears. 

“I love them,” she says. “Thank you.” 

__________________________________________________________________________

Colt doesn’t always understand. To his credit, Kite doesn’t always understand, either.

The improbability of her, the almost mystic enigma of her very existence, is not easy to comprehend, nor to accept. Kite knows that Colt wants her desperately to be his little sister, to be Reina--and yet, she is neither of these things, in more than just one sense. 

He notices the earrings right away, and comments politely in that stiff manner of his that they’re quite becoming. It troubles her, in a way. She knows he sees the long hair, the fresh piercings in her earlobes, and thinks, sister. Girl. 

But that isn’t how it is, not really. Sometimes she has the compulsion to shave her hair short, right down to the root, just to see what he’d say, what everyone would say. But she adores her hair, even if the color is all wrong, and the longer it grows, the more right and whole she feels. She takes to wearing a hat, too--she can’t find the same one, not exactly, but it’ll do. That’s how she copes with it, most days: thinking to herself, “it’ll do.” 

__________________________________________________________________________

“Do you still draw as well as you used to?”

“Have I ever drawn well?” Ging asks. 

“You seemed to think so before,” Kite responds. “Something about being good at everything, if memory serves.” 

“Well, I guess I wasn’t wrong then, was I?” Ging says with a lopsided grin. “I forget, sometimes. You’re so similar yet you look so different.” 

Don’t remind me, Kite wants to say. Instead she says, “I get that a lot.” 

It’s a little odd, the way she and Ging interact now. Where once he would place a rough grasp on his shoulder, he now places a gentle hand at the back of her waist. He brushes away stray hairs with tenderness and fondness that isn’t unlike his previous affection, but has transformed in nature to something more hesitant and delicate. They’ve always been intimate--touchy, even--but now he treats her as one treats a flower, rather than as one treats a man. 

I’m not going to break, she wants to tell him. In fact, this body is stronger than the last. If anything, she is more of a man than she ever has been. 

Ging doesn’t seem to see this, however. He is tender with the needle this time, so much so that she has to reprimand him--if it doesn’t break the skin deep enough, it won’t stay, she chides. 

The result is more or less what she remembers, and looking at it in the mirror sends a strange chill down her spine. 

This body is not the same, nor will it ever be, no matter how many alterations, no matter what sort of attempts. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe this is how she’s meant to be. Maybe this is who he is now. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
